1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to computerized planning systems, and more specifically, to an automated navigation system for displaying exceptional condition cells in a computerized planning system.
2. Related Art
Merchandise planning systems have become an important tool for successful business planning. Proper merchandise planning allows a business to purchase the right levels of merchandise, in the right assortments, for the right stores. When done correctly, stores have balanced inventories and customers find the products they want. When done incorrectly, stores are faced with clearance markdowns, unhappy customers, and unbalanced inventories. Accordingly, accurate merchandise planning can be the difference between profitability and unprofitability.
Specialized software programs that handle planning data are now available to facilitate merchandise planning. Merchandise planning software programs allows users to create, monitor, evaluate and adjust merchandising plans. At the heart of such programs are spreadsheets that display and analyze data. During planning sessions, users can study and manipulate data to, for example, plan for business needs, create xe2x80x9cwhat-ifxe2x80x9d scenarios, and analyze performance.
One of the problems faced by users, however, is managing the volume of data available while in a planning session. A typical view of a planning data set may have hundreds of viewable pages of data. Accordingly, the data being viewed in any one page of data will by necessity be a small subset of the planning data. A typical planning session therefore can quickly become logistically burdensome since the planner is required to constantly switch between viewable pages. This problem is further aggravated by the fact that the same set of data can be viewed in many different ways. For example, data can be viewed within different dimensions (e.g., goods sold during given time periods, goods sold by different store locations, etc.) and at different levels of detail (e.g., goods sold by the month, goods sold by the week, etc.). Moreover, during a planning session, a planner may only be interested in analyzing a small set of data items spread out throughout the data set.
For example, planners often need to efficiently identify and deal with potentially problematic or exceptional data. Specifically, a user might want to know the months when shoe inventory will be projected to fall below a critical level. Once identified, the planner can take corrective action, e.g., ordering more inventory for those months. While present systems provide some basic tools for identifying exceptional data, there are no comprehensive tools that integrate identifying exceptional data within a planning session to increase efficiency. Without an easy way of navigating to the data items of interest, planning can become inefficient and time consuming.
The present invention addresses the above-mentioned problems by providing a system for analyzing planning data, wherein the planning system includes a computer program that comprises a planning data window for displaying a view of the planning data; a definition system for defining exception criteria; a searching system for identifying exceptions in the planning data based upon the exception criteria; an exception dialog for displaying exceptions identified by the searching system and for selecting one or more of the displayed exceptions; and a navigation system that allows a planner to navigate from exceptions listed in the exception dialog to and among the exceptions displayed in the planning data window. Furthermore, to facilitate the planning process, exceptions identified in the planning data are highlighted or annotated when they appear on pages in the planning data window.
The invention also includes a method for navigating to exceptions in a planning data window in a computerized planning system, comprising the steps of: defining exception criteria; searching planning data for exceptions based upon the exception criteria; displaying exceptions located during the search step; selecting a first one of the located exceptions; and displaying a first portion of the planning data in the planning data window, wherein the first portion of the planning data includes the first selected exception. The method further comprises the step of annotating a cell containing the first selected exception in the planning window to indicate that the cell contains one of the located exceptions.
It is therefore an advantage of the present invention to provide a planning system in which a planner can navigate to exceptions in the planning data from a dialog that lists identified exceptions.
It is a further advantage of the present invention to provide a planning system in which a planner can toggle through exceptions located within the planning data window.
It is a further advantage of the present invention to provide a planning system in which exceptions located within the planning data will be highlighted in the planning data window.